WASHINGTON (AP) Federal officials said Friday there is no terrorist connection to a computer disk found in Iraq that contained information about schools in six states.

The disk was made by an unidentified Iraqi man who was doing research and had no connections to al-Qaida or the Iraqi insurgents battling U.S. forces, according to the FBI.
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Some material on the disk appeared to be randomly downloaded from a publicly accessible Education Department Web site and included such things as manuals on workplace safety, crisis management studies, student codes of conduct and building security diagrams.
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''It's not about schools, it's about policy,'' said FBI Agent William Evanina, spokesman for the FBI field office in Newark, N.J. ''There's no terrorism threat to these schools.''

The school districts are in California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey and Oregon. The FBI contacted local officials in the communities last month and told them about the disk and what it contained.

Although there was no indication of a terror threat, the FBI decided to contact local officials out of an abundance of caution.
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Fear! Terror! Be Afraid! Always, Always, Be Very Very Afraid! (and be sure to vote for GeeDubya!)

Aye, even the earliest reports of this story have included quotes from OCT and FBI spokesmen to the effect that a) the "alerts" were never meant to be made public, and b) the information on the disks didn't appear to be sinister, and were probably related to civic planning.

In light of the Beslan tragedy, I think the OCT did exactly the right thing by quietly notifying the involved school districts that their evacuation procedures were being downloaded on the other side of the planet, while taking care to point out that in this instance there was no threat.

Perfectly appropriate. "Uh, people... um, we're alright so far, but it might be a good idea to, you know, change your evacuation procedures and then, uh, keep them off the internet." I don't see a benefit to having very specific information like that available to anyone with an internet connection. School employees need to know procedures, students need to be drilled, and parents need to know where to go to pick up their kids in the event of an emergency. None of this is practically accomplishable by directing people to a web page.

The OCT identified a potential vulnerability and brought it to the attention of the proper authorities, so it could be corrected. Quietly.

Unlike numerous other situations, I don't see any scare-mongering or cynical political motivation here.